John D. Griffin and Grace Sager 

Published: 2021, Studies in American Political Development 

Publication coming soon!

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John D. Griffin, Chad Kiewiet de Jonge, and Vania Ximena Velasco-Guachalla

Published: 2020, British Journal of Political Science

Abstract:

This article elaborates relative deprivation theory to a societal level to argue that political unrest is rooted in the polarization of citizens' grievance judgments, rather than the mean level of societal grievance. Using data from twelve cross-national survey projects, it examines the relationship between citizen polarization and political protest in eighty-four democracies and semi-democracies from 1977 to 2010. The study finds that countries with more polarized citizens are more likely to experience nonviolent protest. Protests are most likely in countries where average citizen grievances are low but citizens are polarized, which is consistent with the elaborated theoretical expectations of relative deprivation theory.

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John D. Griffin and Brian Newman

Published: 2019, Presidential Studies Quarterly 49(2): 310-329.

Abstract:

Presidents face incentives to move toward the median voter as elections approach. We explore the racial consequences of these electoral incentives. As presidents move toward the center, they move away from ideologically noncentrist groups like the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Comparing the president’s annual budget proposal to the CBC’s alternative budget from 1980 to 2012, we test whether Democrats’ (Republicans’) budgets are less (more) congruent with the CBC’s alternative budgets in election years. Typically, Democrats’ budgets are much more congruent than Republicans’ with the CBC’s budgets. However, in election years, Democrats’ budget proposals tend to move away from the CBC’s ideal such that Democrats’ budgets are no better aligned with the CBC than are Republicans’ budgets.

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John D. Griffin, Brian Newman, and David W. Nickerson

Published: 2019, Legislative Studies Quarterly 44(1): 133-162

Abstract: 

Theories of democratic politics prize congruence between citizens’ preferences and their elected representatives’ actions in office. Elections are a critical means for achieving such policy congruence, providing voters the opportunity to chasten representatives who are out of step with constituent preferences and to reward the faithful. Do voters act this way? Recent studies based on observational data find they do, but these data are somewhat limited. We employ a survey experiment to estimate the extent to which information about policy congruence affects voters’ evaluations of representatives. We informed some subjects how often their member of Congress’s voting decisions match their own stated preferences on the same policies. We find that information about congruence enhances accountability by affecting constituent evaluations of representatives and may also affect citizens’ propensity to participate in upcoming elections.

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John D. Griffin, Brian Newman, and Patrick Buhr

Published: 2020, Legislative Studies Quarterly 45(1)

Abstract: 

Do Americans care how much money congressional candidates earn? We conducted three experiments to examine how candidates' incomes affect voters' perceptions of the candidates' traits and ultimately their vote intention. Subjects evaluated otherwise identical candidates with annual incomes randomly varying between $75,000, $3 million, and a candidate with no income information provided. Results from the three experiments are remarkably similar. Subjects viewed the $3 million earner as significantly more intelligent than the candidate with no income information provided, but this benefit of high income was overshadowed by significant biases against the $3 million candidate. Subjects consistently viewed the $3 million earner as less honest, less caring, and less representative of them than the other candidates. Ultimately, subjects were less likely to say they would vote for the $3 million candidate. These findings demonstrate that the campaign advantages that high‐income candidates enjoy are somewhat offset by voters' initial bias against them.

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Answer, not so much, according to a trio of researchers including CU Boulder political scientist

During a campaign stop in Iowa in 2016, now-President Donald Trump famously told his supporters: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose voters." 

Though the 2016 presidential election is behind us, Trump’s claim illustrates a major question that persists in modern-day politics: whether or not voters are willing to hold their elected representatives accountable for their actions. 

New research from a trio of researchers, including one from the University of Colorado Boulder, sheds some light on this pertinent issue. The paper, titled “A God of Vengeance and of Reward? Voters and Accountability,” was published in  in November 2018 and found that voters are more likely to reward their representatives than punish them for their actions.

“The question of whether voters hold elected officials accountable is right at the heart of our democracy,” said John Griffin, a CU Boulder associate professor of political science. “There had been a number of studies that provided some evidence on that question, but I wanted to examine it in a way that I thought would be more convincing.”

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Professor in Political Science and Faculty Director of the Conference on World Affairs

Six years ago, John Griffin contacted CU professor Scott Adler about an open position at the University of Notre Dame, where Griffin was teaching at the time.

“We reached out to Scott and he politely declined,” Griffin said. “Perhaps coincidentally, around a year later, he contacted me to inquire about whether I might be interested in a position that would be opening up at CU.” Griffin applied for and eventually accepted the position in CU’s political science department.

Griffin took a somewhat circuitous path to becoming a faculty member. After finishing his undergraduate studies in political science in 1990, he did not begin graduate studies in political science at Duke until 1997: “I spent a year in China, I went to law school, and I practiced as a lawyer for a couple of years,” he said.

By the time he went back to school to earn his graduate degree, he “was pleasantly surprised with the differences between the undergraduate and graduate study of the field at that time.” 

“I was attracted to the kinds of questions that are asked in political science,” said Griffin, “and the way the field goes about answering those questions.”

In 2014, Griffin took his interest in political science one step further and became CU’s Faculty Director of the Conference on World Affairs (CWA). This tradition of nearly 70 years invites around 100 guest speakers from around the globe to the CU Boulder campus. Speakers, students, faculty members, and members of the community are all invited to attend a wide range of sessions held over this five-day conference, which will run from April 10^th to April 14^th this year.

“It’s a real collaboration between the university and the broader community,” Griffin said. “We have about 500 community volunteers who recruit our speakers, design the program, moderate sessions, and host our speakers in their homes.”

The CWA covers a myriad of topics, including technology, science, human rights, food, space exploration, and politics. It was called “the conference on everything conceivable” and “one of the most remarkable events in America” by film critic Roger Ebert.

As faculty director, Griffin hopes to engage even more students and faculty in the CWA and find ways to keep the conference financially sustainable.

“As an extension of that, I’d like the conference to have a tangible impact on the reputation of the university,” he said, “and its ability to offer solutions to the technological, social, and moral problems facing the country and the world – so, pretty high aspirations.”

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